Sean Fletcher’s walk down the River Lea on BBC1’s River Walks features the newly opened Walthamstow Wetlands at Tottenham where he says it “feels like we are in the middle of nowhere” having just left Tottenham Hale Station.

The film shows how the reservoirs have are not just concrete pools but have delightful wooded banks and beaches.

Sean Fletcher is walking from Tottenham to the Thames on BBC1 next Monday.

He will explore the industrial past and look to its future.

River Lea will be shown as part of the River Walks series in the BBC1 London region at 7.30pm on Monday 10 December.

Each region is having its own programme so at the same time Olly Smith will be seen walking along Hampshire’s River Itchen on BBC South and JB Gill will be following the River Stour through Canterbury on BBC South East.

Phil Holland, who has worked at Rye House and knows it intimately, has written a book about the moated and allegedly haunted gatehouse.

Rye House and its lovely pub with its 400 year old windows is a popular stop on the Lea Valley Walk.

Only the early 15th-century gatehouse survives from the house. By the time JMW Turner painted it in 1973 the linked buildings comprising the stately home appear to have been replaced by weatherboarded constructions.

The saved gatehouse became isolated 1970.

Phil has undertaken very impressive research and come up with plenty of new facts.

Something not highlighted before is that Rye House was the home of Katharine of Aragon’s lady in waiting Maud Parr. Her daughter Catherine, brought up in the Lea Valley, became Henry VII’s sixth wife.

The book also claims that Elizabeth I stayed as a princess maybe on her way upstream to Hatfield.

The Rye House Plot which was never attempted, although the mastermind was hanged, is explained.

There is an exhaustive chapter on the incredible Great Bed of Ware which was on view at Rye House during the 19th century. It had resonance to visitors being mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Lord Byron and Charles Dickens. Today we can add former poet laureate Andrew Motion although the bed is now in the V&A Museum.

This book without doubt adds greatly to our knowlege of the Lea Valley’s history.

A new but already popular place for lunch at Tottenham Hale is the cafe just inside the Walthamstow Wetlands entrance.

This is opposite The Ferry Boat inn which has long been an option for lunch.

The new cafe is located in a pumping station built in 1894 to pump water through the vast reservoirs which can now be visited free of charge. There is also a shop and you can go upstairs to look at the view.

The cafe is run by The Larder which is responsible for the very popular cafe at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow.

Soup is £5.90 and jacket potato £6.90. You must look to cakes for the pudding choice. The coffee, Union Coffee, is good.

Stonehill Business Park, also known as the Lea Valley Industrial Estate, is slowly disappearing to make way for Meridian Water development.

The industrial estate is immediately south of Lea Valley Viaduct and at present this half a mile is the least attractive on the entire Walk.

Clearance is ahead on the east bank whilst the west side is at present untouched with huge redundant sheds standing silent in long grass and high bushes.

The Leaside Cafe, which used to open at 6am, stands closed and isolated.

The Meridian Water residential plan for the area covers both banks of the river with new bridges planned. One will lead direct to a new railway station due to open next year. This will be a replacement for the now almost inaccessible Angel Road Station to the north which is hemmed in by the flyover approach.

This very noisy flyover across the north end of the site leads to the Cook’s Ferry.Roundabout which takes its name from the original idyllic crossing here.

But still delightful is the river downstream of the Meridian Water southern boundary at Chalk Bridge.

Here there is sudden relief as the Lea Valley Walk reaches the green Tottenham Marshes at a spot once known as Wild Marsh.

An exhibition called Raw Materials: Textiles takes a new look at the Lea Valley’s industrial heritage.

The venue is the Nunnery Galley which is found down an alley in Bow. The building is the former St Catherine’s Convent dating from 1866. It was a Benedictine community although confusingly its cafe is called the Carmelite Cafe.

But it is good drop-in on the Lea Valley Walk: turn off at Bow and walk past McDonald’s.

The alley, which leads to the former convent garden, is opposite ancient Bow church on an island site in Bow Road.

The exhibition is a mixture of historic displays and modern artworks.

Nearby riverside Bromley Hall, a monastic house dating from the 12th century on the tidal Lea, was the centre of calico printing from 1680 to 1820.

On show are hand-carved printing blocks made from pear wood.

Calico and silk printing also took place at Waltham Abbey and West Ham. The Littler family was in charge of the operations which later transferred to Merton on the River Wandle in south-west London to become the Liberty factory.

A giant map shows the location of more calico works at Old Ford and West Ham Abbey as well as silk crepe manufacture at Ponders End and synthetic dyes in Hackney Wick.

Less well-known is the nearby Accumulator Tower by the high railway line on the north side of Limehouse Basin.

The octagonal accumulator tower and chimney stack was built in 1869 by William Armstrong, inventor of the hydraulic crane.

This is the last surviving accumulator tower of three built in the canal dock. All were connected to a pumping station which fed water under high pressure into a hydraulic main that powered coal cranes.

The structure has suffered water damage, vegetation growth and now also has graffiti.